The little boys had a blast with a couple of extension activities we saw online.  For starters the ‘sandpaper’ letters are actually felt. I got the felt letter stickers from Walmart in the sign making section (where they have stencils and mailbox stuff).  I laminated index cards and stuck the felt stickers to the cards.

    Aidan knows his alphabet and is reading by now but he enjoyed identifying the letters by touch only.

    Kieran worked on the letter sounds for a bit and then he went on to practice making the letters on the cornmeal tray.

This pic shows my one-two punch for record keeping. In the last post I shared our weekly goal chart and the notebook for recording what actually got done in detail. This pic shows where it goes. I got large accordian files to store loose papers and projects as they are finished. The files are labelled by person and subject. I also have a file for "this week" which includes odds and ends in progress. We love binders for notebooking but love them less for looseleaf paper. The notebooks are saved for keep-it-forever projects like the book of centuries, the religion notebook, the geography copybook etc. Math, grammar drills, and so on go into the file to verify they are covering those areas. Binder/notebook pages often start out in the accordian file and eventually I will assemble them into the permanent binder when we have enough page protectors to house them.

   This system has a lot of advantages over the binder-for-everything plan which we tried years ago. No more binders with pages half ripped out for starters. I always felt that was instilling a habit of carelessness.  Many papers were lost as well. Page protectors for every single math page are impractical to say the least and add way too much bulk for everyday work. It also takes time to reinforce holes and sort into binders. Better to do that when you have saved up a bunch of work. The file takes seconds to open and deposit the work. At year’s end you can close it up and label it and put the whole file into permanent storage for high school transcripts if need be.

   The Montessori homeschool list was discussing record keeping and I was asked to post my checklist. Decided I would post it here while I was at it.  This year’s record keeping is very simple but we have been able to keep up with it well. I have this chart Download school_weekly_goal_checklist.doc  which I print out for the girls. They can still self-select but it helps to remind us all of the types of things we want to cover each week.  I took the categories from places like Ambleside Online and our Montessori work so its a CM/Montessori mix.

   The red boxes represent the daily seatwork time. The rest they try to hit throughout the week. We don’t do ALL these things every week, admirable as that would actually be. However, I keep the crossed off lists and use them to see if some areas are getting neglected over time so we stay relatively balanced. (academically anyway ; ))

  I also have one composition notebook – per Dr Raymond Moore’s suggestion –  I use as a journal of sorts to write down which pages were done and titles of real books read etc each day. We are enrolled in a private umbrella school and need to keep a calendar so monthly I refer to the dates in the notebook and transfer them to the attendance chart thing. I had once tried composition books for each child.  That was too hard to keep track of and we do much group work so it had to be reentered multiple times.  This way it goes in once for the day. Older kids write their own entries which helps too.

   We have tried computer programs and spread sheets and you name it over the years. Nothing beats ten minutes with the composition bk imo!

Cheryl asked some really good questions:

<<Do you have specific time scheduled for presentations and observing the dc? What do the older dc do during this? How do you keep the younger dc quiet and busy while the olders are doing their work? >>

I have to preface my answer by saying what I do now is not what I did when most of the children in the house were under school age.  Right now, we do have a scheduled seat work time in the mornings. The older children take turns playing with Brendan for half hr intervals so the rest of us can work together.  I rotate through the other children getting them started on independent work and listening to them read or drilling math facts, checking work, etc. Aidan and Kieran also work on their manipulatives and games – usually at the kitchen island which is too high for Brendan to reach. The table is just asking for trouble! <g>

When my oldest began homeschooling we had a baby and 3yo in the mix. I didn’t attempt to do a set school time during the day though we did do lots of library story hours, walks, art work, manips, and so on. Allen would give the babies a bath after dinner and Colin and I would do any concentrated learning like phonics and math then. It was plenty of time for a very young student. Later we added his brothers’ nap time. By the time those times weren’t enough we had kids old enough to start taking turns with the current baby.

So my big thought?  Get lots of self instructional materials for starters. If a good chunk of your curriculum requires interpretation by the teacher there is a problem. It is the curriculum’s problem however – not your family’s! Ditch it if you plan to continue to grow your family. Be flexible on when things happen. There are often lulls through the day when littles wear out, take naps, or lay low for a span.  Tuck learning into those times rather than trying to squeeze your toddlers into a pre-set academic schedule.

As to the Grace and Courtesy presentations – I tend to unschool these <g>.  Can we unschool Montessori?  I guess I do.  While we are getting cleaned up in the bathroom I might say "hey, do you remember how we open and shut the cabinet door?" (insert demo) When we getting ready to run errands I might say, "How do we behave in the store?"  Some time before expecting guests you can role play things like welcoming and sharing toys.

We also like to occasionally bring up ‘dilemmas’.  For instance a sub had told me the children in my co-op preschool room were beginning to get a bit rowdy. When I returned to class we started with our story as usual, then before going to the trays we talked about the room rules (one material at a time, one child per material, taking turns) they all rattled off the rules. Then I asked them to consider possible situations like, "What if you REALLY want the game a friend is playing?"  "What if they are taking a LONG time to finish?" After thinking through how they would handle these scenarios they all did remarkably well at handling them when they occurred.

Drilling these things works well at home too. They get a charge out of practicing it seems and remembering the appropriate way to do things. Aidan came up to me Friday morning and said,"Every time you ask me a question today I am going to say ‘Yes, mom!’" A delightful prospect <g> 

Observations?  All the time. The kids are kinda hard to miss. ; )  Seriously though, a notebook helps if you have a lot going on. You can make notes to yourself as little problems arise like ‘work on please and thank you’  ‘need to practice looking adults in the eye’ ‘towels on the floor – work on how to hang them this wk’. I try not to ‘go off’ the first time I notice problems but use that as a springboard for demos and discussion in the coming days.

I will say it helps tremendously to catch them remembering the right way to do a thing and to comment about it. A simple "Wow you are really careful shutting the cupboard door," or "You shook Mr Jones hand when he introduced himself, that was really brave!"  really makes their day and encourages them to practice what they learned.

Hope that helps, Cheryl!